In the early stages of your business, you may feel that you have a handle on every aspect of the company: it’s small, manageable, and, as it begins to grow, you enjoy your direct involvement with every factor that plays a role in both its short-term and long-term functioning.

Eventually, however, you’ll no longer be able to maintain involvement in every facet of your company. There will come a point where you realize you can’t stretch yourself any thinner. At this point, your natural inclination might be to hire more employees. While this is a viable solution in many cases, it is also important to stop and think about the needs of your company and whether they can be better fulfilled through outsourcing rather than bringing on more in-house team members.

Why Outsource?

1. Outsourcing will reduce your operating costs, plain and simple. Why is it cost-effective? Simply put, outsourcing reduces the need to hire more employees, and thus results in fewer salaries to pay and retirement plans to fund, a reduced amount of office space and equipment to provide, and less training to deliver. None of these pieces are needed when you outsource.

You may notice that outsourcing comes with a higher upfront rate., but don't let that be a deterrent: the work itself is executed with more expertise and in half the amount of time that it would take if it were completed by a less-experienced, in-house employee. This fact alone renders outsourcing a more than worthy investment.

2. Outsourcing puts an end to multi-tasking. While many people can successfully multi-task to some degree, there reaches a point when multi-tasking becomes detrimental to your business, leading to a sizable drop in productivity. As a business owner, it’s important to recognize if you or your employees are becoming overburdened and thus less productive. When this happens, it’s time to outsource. A study from the American Psychological Association revealed that “even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.”

3. Outsourcing allows you to focus on the core of your business. It enables you todole out the tasks that aren’t in your realm of expertise to someone who specializes in your area of need. Many business owners are passionate and knowledgeable about their product or service, but perhaps they have no interest or experience in accounting, financial strategy, marketing, or IT. These areas are all immensely important for a business and must be performed with time, precision, and skill. Outsourcing will take these tasks out of your hands and into the hands of skilled professionals who can maintain these complex jobs while you concentrate on your business.